The present invention is directed to a machine for processing web material, for instance, a web of cardboard, paper or synthetic material in order to manufacture blanks to be folded into boxes.
The processing of a cardboard web, for instance, to produce box blanks which are to be folded into boxes includes the steps of printing, cutting, creasing, as well as stripping of the waste cardboard and finally delivering the blanks in a piling-up station. A machine for processing web material in order to manufacture box blanks by using rotatable members or tools acting on the web are already known. The rotatable members are generally arranged in several successive stations, for example, in one of several printing stations, a creasing station, a cutting station and a stripping station. In addition, the tools of these successive stations are driven in a synchronized relationship. These rotating tools are usually preceded by a feeding station for feeding the web of material into the various rotating processing stations and is followed by a delivery station which delivers the manufactured box blanks. These machines are currently available and are well known in the art.
One difficulty with this type of machine is that the size of the box blank, which can be manufactured, is limited by the diameter of the various rotatable members or rolls in the cutting, creasing and stripping stations. The solution is then to change these rotatable members or rolls so that the diameter suits the desired size for the blank, but it practically requires a complete disassembly of the stations equipped with the rotatable members so that a change of the size of the rolls or members in the machine causes the machine to be out of production for quite some time.
Another difficulty occurs in the setting of the synchronization of the successive stations. So far, the angular phasing of the rotatable members or rolls of the various stations could only be achieved by their most accurate registering. To that aim, the driving members of the station had to be set with particular pinions acting like a differential. This solution is expensive because of the numerous parts which are required.